The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (34 page)

Chapter 31

B
y the seventh day, Rhiann and Conaire had dropped all pretence of engaging in other activities. They simply waited, looking out from the spur at the dun’s base.

The sun was low when Conaire suddenly sat up a little straighter, shading his eyes. Rhiann was curled up next to him, making up for the sleep she had missed these last nights. A single rider was making his way along the track that ran between the fields. As he came closer he reined into a trot, and Conaire recognized Rori’s red hair.

‘Rhiann!’ Conaire hissed, jolting her full awake. He stood and waved at Rori from the shadow of the trees, calling out in their own dialect. Rori started, but seeing it was Conaire, quickly nudged his horse off the path and into the lee of the rocks. He was plainly exhausted; wet and covered in dirt, and the horse was lathered, rolling its eyes. ‘Eremon has sent me to get you,’ he gasped out.

Rhiann bent down for their water flask, and Rori gratefully took a few deep gulps. ‘He went to the Roman camp alone, and there met some sort of treachery – he will not say what. But two days ago he escaped, and we have ridden through the night to outrun pursuit.’

‘You are being followed?’ Conaire was holding the horse’s bridle.

‘We have seen no one, but Eremon said we must return here ahead of the Lady Samana or her messengers. That is all he said.’

‘Where is he?’ Conaire asked.

‘He and the men are in hiding a day’s ride away, to the south-west. Agricola is north. When we left the camp, Eremon thought it better to head due south, until he reached that range of big hills we passed on the way here.’ Tired though he was, Rori puffed out his chest. ‘I begged to come for you. Eremon was afraid that he would have a price on his head, but I am fast, and good at not being noticed!’

Conaire clapped Rori on the shoulder. ‘So you are, my boy!’ He turned to Rhiann. ‘We must leave immediately. We’ll go straight to the
stables and get our horses. Is there anything that you need from the lodge?’

Rhiann shook her head. She’d taken to bringing her medicine bag with her in case she saw anything she wanted to gather, and kept her figurines and other personal totems in her pack, close by, to ease her heart. And Conaire kept his and Eremon’s swords with him, too.

When they entered the gates, the Votadini guards barely gave them a glance. Rhiann and Conaire were now a common sight to them, and in Samana’s absence they had not been given any orders that the Epidii Queen and her escort were any danger to them.

Rhiann, Rori and Conaire feigned relaxation until they had walked their horses out of sight of the walls. Then, mounting up, Rori took them off the main path into the range of hills to the south.

They reached Eremon by the next dawn, stiff and cold and aching from riding. In the blue shadows of a grove of tall birches, Rhiann was unable to discern one man from another, until she made out Eremon by Conaire’s horse, talking softly but urgently. At the sound of his voice, all Rhiann’s memories of fear, her sleepless nights, her burning vision … rose up in one surge of anger, choking her.

Now he was standing by her leg, looking up. She stared straight between her horse’s ears, and then suddenly urged it forward until she was level with Conaire. ‘Are we going home?’

The other men fell silent around them in the cold shadows. ‘Yes, lady.’ Conaire’s voice had resumed its distant, respectful air. ‘At all speed.’

‘Good,’ she replied. ‘You will ride with me, then?’

Eremon was in the saddle again, and he walked his horse to Conaire. Rhiann could just glimpse a dark mound slung over his stallion’s rump. ‘Yes, brother, please look out for the lady. Make sure she does not fall behind.’

‘I can ride as well as you,’ Rhiann retorted. Eremon did not answer her.

They rode far west before turning north, as Eremon explained that Agricola’s men were massed near the outfall of the Forth on the east coast. And at each brief stop, the Roman captive, for that is what Eremon’s burden turned out to be, was propped against a tree.

Rhiann began to take him food and water, as something about the pitiful fear in his dark eyes stirred her, despite the fact that he was the enemy. Or perhaps it was because kindness to the Roman seemed to irritate Eremon, and she was still too angry to even look at
him
.

The druids had taught her some scraps of Latin, for talking with foreign traders, and so she was able to glean the captive’s name and station.

And the fact, important to her, that he was not a fighter but some kind of builder.

Until her anger had run its first course, she avoided all talk with the men, wrapping herself in her cloak away from their whispered debates. But after two days, she needed the facts of what had happened, for her own peace. As they climbed in pairs up a high, twisting glen, she slowed her horse to keep pace with the prince.

He glanced at her. ‘Does this mean you will hear what I have to say at last?’

She nodded.

‘Then hear this.’ He looked away, his voice subdued. ‘It was Agricola himself in the camp, Rhiann.’

So that was the man in her seeing! ‘What happened, Eremon? I deserve to know.’

He sighed, and hunched his shoulders. He was exhausted, but she hardened her heart against him, thinking of her own sleepless nights.

‘He wanted me to get the tribes to agree to a treaty. And … he also offered to make me a client king, to send me home to Erin with a Roman legion at my back.’ He said the last words in a rush.

Rhiann gasped, and when he did not speak, stared at him more keenly. ‘So, the decision was difficult, then. But why refuse? I gather you did, else why escape?’

‘Of course I refused!’ he snapped, but for a brief moment, she saw guilt in his face. ‘He had me in a trap,’ he went on more softly. ‘If I told him what I really thought, he would have killed me. He gave me one day to decide, but I escaped before I had to give an answer. I think he assumed I would agree.’

That fitted with her seeing, and what Conaire said. But there was, of course, something missing. ‘What of Samana in all this?’

To her satisfaction she saw his face set like stone. ‘She was in league with Agricola all along. She had no intention of ever trying to win free of him.’

Then why did Eremon still lay with her!

As if reading Rhiann’s thoughts, he added, ‘I had to keep my real intentions from Samana. So I was … normal … with her, too.’ He shifted and cleared his throat. ‘Rhiann, have you not wondered why we have, as yet, seen so few patrols? Or why there were so few on our trip here?’

She shook her head.

‘We are still in Votadini territory, that’s why.’ He was bitter. ‘Agricola is so sure of them, that he does not feel the need to patrol their lands. He’s using this peace to start the building of a line of forts across the land between your Clutha and Forth. From his base in the east, his
grasping fingers are already reaching west. It won’t be long before he cuts off the southern tribes. Then he will turn his face to us.’

‘And you believe that Samana herself is behind this alliance, and not her king?’

Eremon’s mouth twisted. ‘Oh, yes.’ He wrapped the reins around his fingers. ‘I admit I was wrong, Rhiann, in many things. And … I’m sorry.’ He seemed to want to say more, but instead compressed his lips and pulled up his horse so she could enter the pass alone.

Stunned, she was blind to the broad sweep of valley that opened up before her. The great Eremon, apologizing? Humbling himself, to her? And Conaire’s words came back to her, describing an Eremon she had never seen.
The best of brothers, the best of friends
…

She watched her horse’s hooves striking the stony path below, lost in thought. But for the first time in days, something cold and strained in her began to soften.

In fact, there was no pursuit. Far behind, Agricola dismissed the interlude to his men.

‘He can do nothing,’ he said, when his commanders had been roused from their beds that morning. ‘We will be at war soon. The next time we meet the prince of Erin he will be on the end of my sword!’

‘What of Didius?’ one asked.

Agricola shrugged. ‘He was witless enough to get caught. We will tell his family he died in battle – only his death could win
him
honour, anyway.’

Samana, though, was not so calm, storming and stamping and cursing. ‘Give me men now, and we can overtake them!’ she begged Agricola. ‘Or send your fastest messenger to my dun so I can have them taken! And my cousin too!’

Agricola shook his head. ‘He is not worth the trouble to me, Samana. I have lost four men, I will not risk more on some race across the country. You will have to accept that this bird slipped your net, lady.’

Samana’s eyes burned with black fire. ‘No! I will not accept that. I never lose!’

Agricola grabbed her wrist in an iron grip. ‘You are still mine, Samana. Since when am I the second prize? We are going to win, so you will not need your prince in any case.’

Breathing heavily, Samana’s eyes focused back on him. ‘Of course, my lord,’ she said, controlling herself. ‘But I am going home. I must check that nothing came to harm while the barbarians were there.’

Agricola released her arm. That was the Samana he knew – the way she said ‘nothing’ rather than ‘no one’.

Her deep disregard for people always impressed him.

Chapter 32

O
n a clear morning, the looming edge of the Highlands rose starkly from the broad Clutha plain. Eremon had been keeping the river to their left, but not following it too closely. If Agricola was building forts across the isthmus, then there must be troops around here somewhere – and the river provided a good artery for supply.

So far they had been fortunate. After leaving the high ground to the east, they kept to the woods that clustered in the dips and folds of the open plain, and the alder scrub that fringed the river narrows. The sudden warmth had unfurled the leaves, and the trees offered better cover now than on their trip east.

But Eremon still kept a tight watch. They had crossed into Damnonii territory now, and the people here had been subdued by the sword before their kings surrendered, so there was a greater chance of meeting soldiers.

Soon the river widened into a slow-moving swathe of green water, and turned away from its northern path to seek the sea in the west. In a saddle of woodland between two ridges, Rhiann again sought out Eremon. ‘There are few paths over the mountains. One that I know of will bring us to the Loch of the Waters and down to Dunadd. To get there we must bear away from the Clutha, north, until we reach a great loch as large as a sea.’

They were edging down the slope of the River Elm, which ran into the Clutha, when they heard faint screams on the wind, and saw a thick plume of smoke erupting from the valley bottom.

‘Slowly!’ Eremon cautioned, and when they’d tethered their horses in a clump of birches, he and Conaire crept away to investigate. By now the screams had turned to sobs, and the smoke was spreading in a dark stain over the clear sky.

Rhiann realized that her palms were sweating, and she wiped them
on her dress, gritting her teeth as another shriek rent the air. When Eremon and Conaire reappeared, their eyes were bright with a steel light Rhiann had not seen before.

‘Fergus.’ Eremon was curt. ‘Take the Roman into the trees and let him pass water or whatever else he wants to do. But make sure that gag is tight, and keep your sword at his side.’

After Fergus had shoved his charge away around a stand of dead oaks, Conaire spat on the ground. ‘There are strange soldiers raiding a farmstead. Big men, in rough uniforms. They are not Albans.’

‘Are they … hurting people?’ Rhiann’s voice came out faint, too faint.

‘Yes,’ Eremon answered, but his eyes were fell, not seeing her. ‘It is too late to save them. But not too late to teach these wolves some manners!’

‘Eremon!’ Rhiann blurted. ‘We cannot put ourselves in danger!’

He did not seem to hear her. His hand went to Fragarach’s hilt, his mouth tense with excitement. ‘How my blade longs to drink of Roman blood!’

‘My blade, also,’ Conaire added, and in the fierceness of his face Rhiann could no longer see the gentle person who had befriended her. All the men were instantly charged with energy.